


Worth a Thousand

by Traincat



Category: Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Spider-Man (Comicverse)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-27 01:58:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10799325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Traincat/pseuds/Traincat
Summary: “Are you kidding me right now?” Johnny said. “You spent years selling your own selfies!”“That’s not the same thing,” Peter said, rolling his eyes.“Name one way it’s different,” Johnny shot back.“I didn’t just web a camera to a wall and stand around with my good side pointed that way,” Peter said, talking over Johnny, voice rising and words rushing together. Irate Spider-Man voice – it was how Johnny always knew he had him. “I had a tracker in my costume to keep myself in the shot! That is acompletelydifferent thing!”Johnny tipped his chin up and glared at Peter. “Want to bet?”





	Worth a Thousand

**Author's Note:**

> For day two of Spideytorch Week: Competitions, or it was supposed to be before it became 95% super fluffy established relationship banter. Also really obviously for the alternative theme Sparks at one point. 
> 
> One of the funniest Spider-Man things to me is the divide between writers who think Peter's actually good at photography vs the ones who think he's kind of terrible but capable of getting shots of Spider-Man nobody else can manage. (Personally I'm on the pretty good side, because he tends to be annoyingly talented.) Johnny is definitely the king of selfies, though.

The first time Johnny caught Peter Parker taking photos of him, he was eighteen and convinced the guy still had a grudge. He was stretching, trying to work out a post-fight ache, when a camera flash caught his eye. He had no idea where Peter Parker had come from, or how he'd gotten beyond the police line, but there he was, collar askew and hair every which way like he'd been caught in a hurricane.

"If there's something on my face, I'm burning that camera," he said, "and then I'm coming for you."

"Put your head back the way it was, you're ruining my shot," Parker said, surprisingly bossy. Not a whole lot of civilians talked to Johnny the way Peter Parker did. He was pretty sure he didn't like it.

"What are you doing?" Johnny demanded. Parker put the camera down long enough to scowl at him.

"I'm taking your photo," he said. "So just stand there and look pretty. I'm sure you're familiar with the concept."

Johnny shut his mouth with a click of teeth, too shocked by the sudden rush of butterflies in his stomach to snipe back. Peter Parker had the nerve to _smile_ , raising his camera again.

"Can you move back the way you were before?" he said, making clucking noises under his tongue, and like a man possessed Johnny did what he was told.

"It's a real talent that kid's got," Ben said when Peter Parker had disappeared back behind the police line.

"Yeah," Johnny said absently, still feeling a little off-kilter. "He's a good photographer."

"I meant the way he managed to compliment and insult you at the same time," Ben said, settling one big hand on top of Johnny's head, messing up Johnny's hair. Johnny yelped in outrage, sparks skittering from his skin. "It's a gift."

 

* * *

 

"Was that really the first photo I took of you?" Peter asked years later, words muffled a little when Johnny bent to kiss him in the middle of the sentence. His fingers flexed underneath Johnny's thighs.

"I think I'd remember," Johnny said, collapsing sideways off of him and rolling onto the sheets. He buried his face in the pillow, suddenly unable to help all the warmth in his chest, the happiness version of going nova.

"I don't think that was the first photo," Peter said, an easy _you're wrong, no you're wrong_ wind-up. Johnny was too blissed out to do anything more than kick him.

“It was the first photo I noticed, and that I didn’t accost you into taking while you flirted with my girlfriend,” Johnny allowed and Peter snickered.

“Hot stuff, if we’re only going to go by things you _noticed_ \-- alright, alright,” Peter said, laughing when Johnny kicked him again. He wrapped an arm around him and pulled him in close. Johnny breathed in the smell of him, sex and sweat and Johnny’s cologne, the faded chemical scent of web fluid underneath it all. “Come here, I missed you.”

“You just had me,” Johnny said, sighing like the way Peter was nosing at his neck and walking his fingers up Johnny’s spine was a terrible hardship. He always got so handsy after sex. And during. And before. And pretty much all the other times, too.

“Doesn’t mean I can’t miss you,” Peter said, making his way up Johnny neck to kiss his jaw, his chin, the corner of his mouth.

He was _ridiculous_ ; Johnny touched his face to get him to still. Then, once he was touching him anyway, he found himself tracing Peter’s nose, the shape of his lips, the little nick of a scar by his jaw.

“What are you doing?” Peter asked, catching Johnny’s hand in his own.

“I like your face,” he said, palming Peter’s cheek. It was possible Peter wasn’t the only ridiculous one.

“You do, huh?” Peter said. “Well, I guess it’s got all the usual features. Mouth. Nose. Extra eye, in case I get careless.”

“No,” Johnny told him.

“What?” Peter said, covering one eye with his hand. “I could work an eyepatch. Watch out, Nick Fury.”

“I’m getting your camera,” Johnny said, pulling away and grabbing it from the bedside table.

“You break it,” Peter said, rolling over onto his back. “Yadda, yadda. What do you want it for?”

“Figure it out,” Johnny said, settling astride him. “Okay, this has more buttons than I’m used to…”

“You’ve been on the other side of one of those enough. Like you said,” Peter said, raising his eyebrows. “Figure it out.”

"Whatever. Make that face I hate," Johnny said, trying to frame the shot.

“That’s a big category,” Peter said. “And you are holding that upside down. It’s a camera, not an ultimate nullifier, what’s the matter with you?”

“I got it to zoom and now it’s stuck. Okay, you know what, forget this,” Johnny said, setting Peter’s camera down and scrambling for his phone instead.

“Careful,” Peter murmured, catching him by the ankle when he nearly overbalanced. Johnny ignored him, opening up the camera app and moving to straddle Peter again. “Is this going on Instagram? Think of my modesty.”

“What modesty?” Johnny asked. “You’ve been naked in public way more often than I have, which is an accomplishment. Smile.”

“Gouda,” Peter said, smiling lazily up at Johnny. “Reminding the internet about your hot husband?”

“Uh-huh,” Johnny said, flipping through filters. “It’s why I’m leaving your face out.”

“It's for the best, honestly,” Peter said. He sat up suddenly, upsetting Johnny’s balance, and used the advantage to pin him bodily to the bed. He snagged the phone from his hand. “Hashtag morning workout? Really? _My aunt_ follows you on this thing.”

“She knows I didn’t marry you for the conversation,” Johnny said, laughing when Peter bit at his shoulder. He managed to get his phone back and hit post before Peter could change anything. “Get off, you’re heavy.”

Peter put more weight on him. Johnny huffed, looking at his phone instead. Watching likes and comments come in was always fun -- _ummm, why did nobody ever tell me @johnnystorm’s husband is HOT?_ \-- but the photo was his main focus. Peter looked good in it – really good, his hair mussed and bare chest on display, arms crossed under his head. His smile was soft, like he was humoring Johnny. He probably had been, and now he was going to suffer for it by making faces at all the Instagram comments for the rest of the day. Johnny loved him so much.

“Looks good,” he murmured, shaking his phone in Peter’s direction. Peter, focused on his neck again, hummed something that was more platitude than agreement. “You’re the second hottest guy in my life.”

“I’d get jealous like you want, but I know you’re counting yourself as the first,” Peter said.

Johnny put his phone down and Peter let up enough to let him twist underneath him, so he was on his back. Maybe they could just stay in bed all day, looking at each other, touching. It sounded perfect.

“Not the only photographer in this bed, huh?” he said.

“Funny,” Peter said, snickering.

“Why’s it funny?” Johnny asked, a little distracted by the press of Peter’s mouth, the way he slotted their fingers together. All day in bed was starting to look like a distinct possibility.

“Cell phone pictures,” Peter murmured, breaking up the words between kisses, “photographer. It’s just funny. You sound like an ad campaign. I admit you’re good at finding flattering lighting but staring at yourself on a screen isn’t exactly...”

He broke off with a hum.

“Are you kidding me right now?” Johnny said. “You spent years selling your own selfies!”

“That’s not the same thing,” Peter said, rolling his eyes.

“Name one way it’s different,” Johnny shot back.

“I didn’t just web a camera to a wall and stand around with my good side pointed that way,” Peter said, talking over Johnny, voice rising and words rushing together. Irate Spider-Man voice – it was how Johnny always knew he had him. “I had a tracker in my costume to keep myself in the shot! That is a _completely_ different thing!”

Johnny tipped his chin up and glared at Peter. “Want to bet?”

“How do you mean?” Peter asked, narrowing his eyes right back.

“Consider it a challenge,” Johnny said. “Whoever takes the best photo of the other by the end of the week wins.”

“What’s the criteria for determining best photo?” Peter asked, raising his eyebrows. There was a spark in his eye. Peter could never turn down a challenge, a personality quirk that regularly left him bleeding on strange rooftops. All Johnny was doing was curbing that instinct in a more creative fashion.

And also winning.

“We’ll have a committee,” Johnny said. “Sue. Reed. Ben. Dragon Man and the kids.” Peter opened his mouth to argue. “This way you don’t get to cheat by taking advantage of my vanity with nude photos.”

Peter shut his mouth.

“Yeah,” Johnny said, smirking. “That’s what I thought.”

“That’s it?” Peter said after a moment of consideration. “That’s the only rule?”

“Build a drone and have it follow me around, what do I care,” Johnny said.

Peter nodded to himself for a second, mouth twisted to the side the way he did sometimes when he was thinking.

“The committee’s biased in your favor,” he said after a second. “I want my aunt and Harry on it.”

“Harry tips the scales in your favor,” Johnny shot back.

“And Valeria rigged the Eurovision results and now Latveria is hosting,” Peter said. “Harry and May or no dice.”

Johnny drummed his fingers idly against Peter’s shoulders, pretending to think about it.

“Fine,” he said, but only after Peter had started scowling in earnest. “Deal.”

“Deal,” Peter said, kissing Johnny one more time, a more romantic way to seal a promise. Then he grabbed his camera and fished his pants off the floor and practically rocketed out of bed.

“Where are you going?” Johnny shouted after him.

“To see a man about a dark room!” Peter replied, buttoning his jeans and fleeing. Johnny huffed and flopped, dramatically, back down onto the bed.

He grabbed his phone and went to check how many likes his latest post had gotten on Instagram.

 

* * *

 

Johnny knew he said no rules, but he hadn’t been expecting Peter to play up the full extent of his powers. Peter lurked. He skulked. He dropped down from the ceiling at random intervals and snapped a shot before beating a hasty exit. Johnny couldn’t even watch a movie in peace.

“Something you want to explain?” Sue asked dryly, picking popcorn out of her hair.

Johnny explained. Sue stared at him.

“He’s a professional photographer,” she said.

“He’s a loon,” Johnny pointed out.

“Be that as it may,” Sue said. “He’s a loon who supported himself for years with photography. He had a book of his photos published, and I know this because Franklin refused any other bedtime story but the quote-unquote "Spider-Man book" for a whole year. What’s the point of this, exactly?”

“I don’t know. Why do I do anything? I like watching him brood,” Johnny admitted. “It’s funny. And kind of hot.”

“Don’t burn the building down,” Sue said, like that had anything to do with driving Peter up the wall.

“Well, I’ll try, Sue, but sacrifices have to be made for the sanctity of my blessed union, et cetera,” he said, climbing over the back of the couch. “I have _got_ to draw on his face in the middle of the night or something.”

“Were they this disgustin’ before they got married?” he heard Ben ask.

Johnny’s own attempts to catch Peter on film didn’t go nearly as well. Peter was annoyingly fast on his feet, always moving, and all of a sudden he seemed to react for Johnny going for his phone like Dracula to garlic bread. He twisted, he swerved, and on one memorable occasion he dove to save Vil from setting off some kind of tripwire Lego trap, designed by either Val, Bentley, or some very bored Moloids. Johnny had been trying for three days and so far all he had to show for it were two dozen shots of a brunet blur and five appreciative pictures of Peter wearing an absolutely tiny towel which he didn’t think were strictly safe for their committee.

Johnny was really starting to get annoyed.

Peter got home early – and by early, Johnny meant the next morning. Dawn was just barely breaking when he heard the window creak and felt the bed dip. The room was still shrouded in shadows.

“Hey,” Peter whispered. “You up?”

“I am now,” Johnny replied, but the truth was he hadn’t been sleeping to begin with. His phone was shoved under his pillow; the Netflix app was probably still running.

“Sorry,” Peter said, leaning over him to kiss his cheek. He’d only just rolled up the mask; the line of spandex brushed against Johnny’s face. Johnny planted a hand against his face and shoved him back, getting up on his elbows.

Peter sat back on his haunches in that particular way he did, peeling the mask off first and then the top half of his costume. Johnny watched the dark shape of him move.

“I did text you,” Peter said. “Frequently. With photos, even.”

“I’m not mad at you,” Johnny lied.

There was a beat. Peter’s costume disappeared over the side of the bed.

“I just got myself undressed,” he said. “So I’m pretty sure you’re mad about something.”

“You know I could have beaten you at every race, right?” Johnny said.

“Wha?” Peter said, getting into bed.

“Every race across Manhattan,” Johnny said, lying back down on his side. “You’re fast, and you swing, and maybe nobody knows New York up high the way you do, but I _actually fly_ , Peter. I could’ve beaten you whenever I wanted. But it’s more fun when it’s fair.”

“I have a feeling I did something,” Peter said, after one awkward second. “But I have no idea what it is, and now I’m really hoping you don’t want to race because I’m exhausted.”

Johnny grabbed his phone from under the pillow, flipped open his recent photos, and shoved it at Peter’s chest.

It took Peter a moment to clue in.

“Why are these all so blurry?” he asked, flipping through them. Johnny waited impatiently for the other shoe to drop. “Oh. Have I been – was I moving?”

“You didn’t even notice?” Johnny said, rolling over. “Are you serious?”

Peter looked faintly guilty in the illumination from Johnny’s phone.

“Listen, Johnny,” he said. “My spider-sense – it sort of gives me an idea for when I’m being watched, right? Having cameras pointed at me when I’m not expecting them has sort of been a bad thing my whole career. I swear, I was not doing it on purpose.” He paused. “Seventy percent of the time, I was not doing it on purpose.”

Johnny groaned, sliding a hand over his eyes. “I can’t believe you.”

“Hey,” Peter said, grabbing his free hand and kissing his knuckles. “I’m the one whose former profession is being sullied by this ridiculous bet, okay? I’m the one who should be sulking.”

“If you can’t take the heat…” Johnny grumbled.

“So sensitive,” Peter groaned, flopping on his back. He reached out to turn on the bedside light. “Go on, I’m at your mercy. Snap away.”

Peter had mask hair and dark circles under his eyes. There was a nasty scrape on one shoulder, already showing signs of healing, and despite the joking tone his face was set in a pensive frown. Johnny, so help him, felt sympathy creep up.

“Give it up, masked man,” he said, ghosting his hand over Peter’s injuries. “Anything broken?”

“Just my faith in humanity,” Peter replied.

Johnny sighed, flicking the light back off, and settled down with his head on Peter’s good shoulder. He cranked up his temperature a little, and Peter sighed in contentment.

“Just stop being such a ghost every time you see me pull out my phone, okay?” he said. “Sometimes it’s not you, it’s Twitter.”

“Where you make fun of me,” Peter noted, burying his nose in Johnny’s hair.

“To keep you humble. It’s for your own good,” Johnny said. “Just give me something vaguely like a shot here, that’s all I’m asking.”

“Fine,” Peter said. “Since you’re not going to win anyway.”

“Instagram thinks you’re a gold digger, by the way,” Johnny told him.

Peter laughed silently, chest shaking with it.

“They’re right,” he said, soft and sleepy. “I got lucky.”

 

* * *

 

Peter, if anything, got more annoying after that: he started _posing_.

“Can you be a normal person for like five minutes?” Johnny asked, snapping a photo anyway. Peter flexed a little harder, leaning up against the refrigerator and blocking Ben from the milk.

Ben glowered at Johnny. Johnny innocently took another picture.

“Just trying to give you a shot here,” Peter said, weaving around Ben as he tried to forcibly move Peter from the vicinity of the fridge. “Trying to help out. I’m considerate like that. I think you said something like that once, that you married me for my consideration.”

“We’re getting divorced,” Johnny said. Ben’s huge hand blocked Peter’s face in the next shot. “You can have Ben.”

“You two leave me outta this,” Ben grumbled.

The rest of the week passed in a blur of photos – Johnny with his hair all mussed from Peter’s hands. Peter, beset by children, a human jungle gym with a kid dangling from each limb. Johnny reheating pizza. Peter glaring murderously at the Bugle. Johnny in a tux, framed in front of the windows. Peter laughing, caught completely carefree for a second.

Peter had decided to make a party out of the judging, swinging in that afternoon with pizza. His photos sat on one half of the table. Johnny had set up a slideshow of his own.

“Did you have to take so many photos of me mid-Jameson rant?” Peter asked, longsuffering.

Harry arrived ten minutes late, wearing designer sunglasses and a designer baby sling from which baby Stanley was doing his best to escape.

“I refuse to be anything less than the Simon Cowell of this shindig,” Harry said. His infant son smacked him in the face.

The Moloids, bless them, saw Stanley and immediately declared him their new king.

“Speak, young one,” intoned Tong most gravely. “Tell us your unholy secrets.”

“Yeah, uh, are they available to babysit?” Harry asked, pointing at Turg’s floating capsule.

“We’ll talk after this circus act,” Ben told him. Sue elbowed him and May shushed them both, because she was Johnny’s secret favorite.

May and Sue had their heads bent together, smiling at the photos. Reed hmm'd thoughtfully from time to time, and Ben did a whole lot of rolling his eyes. Valeria barely looked up from her tablet before voting for Johnny, which he was sure had nothing to do with the fact that he’d bought it for her, while Franklin dithered over his loyalties.

The Moloids really just cared about the baby. Harry seemed pleased.

One of Peter’s pictures made Johnny pause. It was a photo of Johnny, but in double. On one side he was standing in torn jeans and an old t-shirt, leaning on the balcony. On the other he was all in flames, lighting up the night. Both figures were standing back to back, mirrored images of each other, just slightly overlapping. Johnny’s throat felt tight.

“How did you do that?” he asked.

“I couldn’t resist,” Peter said, smiling at him. He lowered his voice, whispering in Johnny’s ear, “I had to fake my own identity enough times. I’m pretty good, right?”

“It’s beautiful,” Johnny said. “You’re amazing.”

“Spectacular,” Peter agreed. “Occasionally sensational.”

“You win,” Johnny told Peter.

“We have to wait for what the committee says,” Peter teased.

“It’s what I said,” Johnny countered. “And Reed.”

“Well, if Reed agrees…” Peter broke off, snickering. “I’m glad you like it.”

The photo of Peter as the Human Jungle Gym won in the end, if only through the sheer force of May Parker insisting she get a copy at once so she could frame it. Johnny preened under the attention, but reached underneath the table to take Peter’s hand.

“A book of Human Torch pictures would be great,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Sparks. A sequel to Webs.”

He expected Peter to laugh at him, but instead Peter just hummed, running his thumb over Johnny’s knuckles.

“I’ve kind of missed it, you know. Taking photos. This was fun,” he admitted. “So… might be nice. Yeah.”

Johnny grinned at him. “And I bet it’d sell better than Webs, too.”

“Don’t start with me.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://traincat.tumblr.com)!


End file.
